Columbia Trout

Trout fishing may conjure images of a fly rods and picturesque spring-fed streams, but yesterday an opportunity opened up to go for trout just down the road from my house a couple of miles, using traditional pond fishing techniques.

Actually, the opportunity to catch these trout has been there all winter, but yesterday was the first day you could keep them. There are several trout recipes remaining in Cooking Wild in Missouri, so we had to give it a shot.

The lake at Cosmo Bethel is stocked with trout in the fall, and on February 1 you can start taking them home, limit four, if you can hook them. I took Henry and Oliver there right after school, and we were joined by about 60 other anglers. It was about 60 and sunny, so we didn’t expect anything different. Due to vegetation, you can only approach the water on about half of the lake, so it was pretty crowded in spots, but there was still room to get your line in the water.

We stayed until dark, and left empty handed. We had some light bites, but failed to hook anything. Henry was dedicated, with his motivation primarily driven not by glory, but by his taste for trout. Oliver was too tempted by the playground nearby.

I would say about 80 percent of the people out there didn’t catch anything, but on the other hand I saw four guys catch their limit in the two hours that I was there, so I know that it’s possible. We’re going to have to give it another go while this weather is holding out. This is the same lake that people were ice-fishing on at this time of year a couple of years ago.

The Ruger

Being the youngest of four siblings, by four years, gave me a distinct advantage in growing up in that my parents always treated me older than I was, and I tried not to screw up that illusion. This led to me getting my first handgun when I was about 14 years old.

Legally, I guess it was my mother’s handgun, since she had to register it in her name. But I certainly thought of it as mine. It was a .22 caliber stainless steel Ruger Single Six, with an extra cylinder that would convert it into a .22 magnum. 

Unlike most handguns, this one was hunting tool. I ran hundreds of rounds of cheap ammo through it to get my skills hunting-worthy. I never did become a crack-shot, but I hunted with it enough that I had some success.

The squirrels must have surely appreciated the Ruger. Many owe their lives to the fact that I was shooting at them with a handgun rather than a rifle or shotgun. But there were a lot of opportunities, and sometimes I hit my mark.

The .22 also was instantly my raccoon hunting gun. When I was climbing up and down creek banks, sometimes icy creek banks, in the middle of the night I appreciated having both hands free and my gun securely tucked away in its holster. And the raccoon was never farther away than the top of the tree. I could always make a good shot at that range, eventually.

I also took rabbits with it, and many frogs. I think within the first year or two of owning the Ruger,  I got every type of game you can hunt in Missouri with a .22, except for a coyote, and I’m not interested in trying to eat a coyote.

Back then I spent a lot of time on an ATV, which in those days had three wheels. Carrying the Ruger in a shoulder holster was much easier than putting a long gun in the ATV gun rack and watching the finish get rubbed off as it bounced around.

When it comes to safety, I don’t think a pistol should ever leave its case unless the shooter is wearing a holster. With a holster  on, the barrel is almost always pointing in a safe direction until the shooter draws to fire. In this respect it is safer than a long gun. But when someone takes a pistol to the backyard or the back 40 to do some target shooting and doesn’t bother to wear a holster, he ends up holding the pistol in his hand all the time, and pointing it all kinds of places he didn’t intend to. In this respect, the pistol is much more dangerous than a long gun; in-hand it is easy to unintentionally point it in an unsafe direction.

My father never had any use for pistols, but didn’t argue with me taking mine when we would raccoon hunt. One night the dogs treed in a cedar tree, and we couldn’t see up in it at all. Dad climbed the tree to the top, and saw the coon, and it was a big one. My friend Troy had climbed part way up, so I climbed up to meet Troy, passed him the Ruger, and he passed it to my Dad, who was taken aback at having to use a pistol. But he was in the top of the tree, what could he do? So he pointed and fired, knocking the raccoon out of the tree. Troy reported feeling it brush down his back on the way down.

When I got old enough to buy a handgun on my own I did; a Smith and Wesson 2206, stainless steel semi-automatic. And I gave it to my Dad. He doesn’t take it hunting, but has employed it several times in the chicken house to take out a nuisance predator.

Since I got warmed up with the .22 at the range last week, maybe I’ll put it to use soon for some small game hunting soon. And I learned yesterday that next year’s muzzle-loading deer season is being opened up to include other weapons, including handguns.  I couldn’t use the .22 for deer, of course, but I do have a .44 that is just waiting for such an opportunity.

At Home on the Range



With the short days of winter, it can be hard to find time to practice shooting skill. So I was glad to see a Groupon for Target Masters come up a couple of months ago.

Yet, I never used it. It expires at the end of February, so I finally made it a priority to put it to use last week, and invited along my friend Robert. I loaded the cars down with guns and ammo and headed out about 6:30 p.m.

The Groupon is a coupon that sold for I think $12 or $15. It is for $68 worth of shooting lane time and gun rental. When I presented the Groupon at Target Masters, the gentleman behind the counter winced, and said he really hated these coupons. He’d been getting a lot of them lately, with the expiration date coming up.

Apparently a lot of people were frustrated when they showed up with the Groupon, but still had to spend money. But I had read the fine print before I purchased it, and was well aware that I couldn’t use my $68 value for ammo, targets or other consumables – rentals and lane time only.

The other sticking point was that if you rent their guns, you have to use their ammo. Fair enough – someone could bring in junk ammo or improperly loaded hand-loads that could damage their guns, so they require you to use theirs so they know its good.

But their ammo is pricey – 9 mm start at $26, so I decided to stick to my guns. I have a ton of old ammo I need to burn through anyway.

Robert goes for the bulls-eye at 45 feet.

Robert had never fired a handgun before, but based on his past experiences of running around in the Nevada desert shooting a .22 rifle, and watching countless hours of police dramas and action movies, he knew the basics of how to safely load, aim and fire. And he fired exceptionally well for a newbie. We started out with my .22, punched many holes in the paper with it, and then moved on to the 9 mm. The gun hadn’t been fired in years, and the ammo was old, yet it still ran through about 100 rounds without a single jam or misfire.

That’s all fine, you might say, but what’s this have to do with putting food on the table? Although I certainly don’t need to make things harder on myself, I’ve always been a fan of handgun hunting. The 9 mm we were shooting may be a less-than ideal hunting firearm, but the .22 is a different story. I’ll write more about that in my next blog post.

 

Farmers Market Venison Pastitsio, page 30-31

Now that's a full pan of pastitsio!

Fred here. This was another recipe that would expand my vocabulary, if nothing else.  It contains eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, venison, penne pasta, oyster mushrooms, parmesan cheese and a bechamel sauce, all layered like a lasagna.

Ann and I worked on it together on Sunday afternoon, although she was definitely in charge. She would probably have referred to me as a sous-chef, but I was really more of an escuelerie. I did grate some cheese, and get tomatoes out of the downstairs freezer when needed.  

We usually try to do these recipes by the book, but after we had browned our venison, and added the two tomatoes, the skillet just looked like browned venison. The tomatoes disappeared. But the picture in the book looked like a red sauce, like you might see in lasagna. We added another tomato. It disappeared, too. We added a can of tomato paste. The meat started to look a little red, so we stopped there, not wanting to deviate from the recipe too much.

The tomatoes from the freezer where late season tomatoes that we ripened off of the vine, which may be why they faded away so quickly.

When we shifted from the mixing bowl to the 9 x 13 glass cake pan for baking, we were glad we hadn’t added any more tomatoes, or any more of anything else. That pan was full. We even tried to push it down to compress it between layers, and it was still quite heaped up in the middle. When we added the sauce on top as the last step, I thought it was going to run over. We debated trying to take out about a third of it and put it in a different pan, but since it was in layers it seemed like that would end up being a real mess, so we stuck with having the pan piled high.

Fortunately the sauce added in the last step was fairly thick, and the whole dish was rather dry. I expected it to boil over and bubble out a lot while baking, but it didn’t lose a drop.

The result: A very hearty dish that may be the very epitome of pastitsio, but I would simply call a casserole. I was hungry when I set down, and I loved it, and kept filling my plate.

We should have invited friends, though. The boys didn’t really go for it, and we have a lot left over. If Henry and Oliver didn’t eat it on round one, we can be pretty sure they won’t like the leftovers much better. On the other hand, it will make a lot of good lunches. This was our next-to-last venison recipe from the book, but we still have a lot of ground venison left, and I look forward to having this again. Sorry kids.

Persimmon Bread Pudding, page 162

Bread pudding is something I've had a lot, it seems like, but have never made. Maybe that's because I like it enough to eat it if it's offered to me, but not quite enough for make it myself. However, it's winter and the list of wild ingredients we have in to keep going with the woods to food project is slimming, so it seems about the right time to make persimmon bread pudding.

We froze enough persimmon pulp in the fall to get through most of the persimmon recipes in the book. That's wild ingredient #1 for this recipe. Wild ingredient #2 is pecans and we still have pecans in the fridge.
I bought a nice loaf of rustic french bread from our local bread bakery, Uprise, for the recipe. That was a good choice. The crust is firm while the bread in the loaf has body without being to rough.
It was a fairly simple recipe to put together with 4 cups of milk, four eggs, a stick o' butter, rum, raisins, etc.
We had my cousin and family over for dinner. I  was glad to hear that Ben, my cousin's husband, really likes bread pudding but rarely has it. At least that was one person who was looking forward to the dessert. And, as far as how the dessert faired: two kids ate all theirs, two kids didn't care for it, and I think the adults were pleased, though I was the only one who went back for seconds.
When I served Oliver a bite of the bread pudding, he mentioned it made his tongue feel funny. Why I couldn't figure out what he was talking about, when it's PERSIMMON bread pudding for goodness sake, is crazy. But, somewhere mid-piece on my own serving, as my mouth felt funny, it occurred to me what Oliver was referring to. The persimmons in the bread pudding were not all ripe! Ooops. You know that weird sensation you get in your mouth when you bite into an unripe persimmon (and if you don't, it's kind of a right of passage thing, you really should try it)? Well, there was a slight sensation of that in the dessert. Strangely that didn't ruin it, though.
Anyway, would I make this recipe again? Yep. Am I dying to make it again? No, not really. But, I think that has more to do with bread pudding not being a favorite in my family than anything with a faulty recipe. I think it was good bread pudding, in fact better than Fred was prepared for, but I like to see a little more elation before I make a recipe again.

Date and Nut Bars, page 130

OK We just saw a performance of STOMP with the kiddos at Jesse Hall. Have you heard of them? No, this has nothing to do with date and nut bars, or our blog. Only we just got home and it's really fun to type after you experience such a fun rhythm and dance performance. The kids are drumming in the hall, and I'll typing like a mad woman and enjoying the sound it makes. Bam. Bam! BAM BAM BAM!!!

OK now I'll try to get over it to write the post. We made gyros tonight for dinner and date and nut bars from the infamous book for dessert. Pecans and black walnuts were the wild ingredient (clickety, click, CLICK, still not over it!)

My sister-in-law Christy is a mighty walnut picker in the fall. And, for Christmas this year she cracked a jar of nuts and gave them to Fred and I. What a very nice gift for us. I used her nuts in this recipe and thought of her, and her thinking of us as she cracked the walnuts, as I was cooking.

The recipe has no fat in it, besides what's in the nuts. It's lots of nuts, dates, lots of brown sugar, three eggs, a fairly low quantitiy of flour and salt. Once cooked, the bars you cut are coated in powdered sugar (click, click . . .sorry, it's hard to get over).

I was surprised by Fred's reaction. He really, really liked them. Normally, his biggest raves for dessert directly coinside with the quantity of chocolate served.

These are a very chewy bar. They are rich but not too heavy. I was hoping they'd be tasty and not remind one of some foamy, nutritious health food bar, and I was in luck. This recipe is awesome.

I think of all the categories so far of wild ingredients we've made from the book, nuts have been my favorite and I believe this is the last nut recipe. So long, nuts. I'll miss you until I cook all the remaining  recipes in the book and can start all over making whatever recipes I want to my heart's content.

Now, excuse me as I go type with abandon just for the rhythm and fun of it . . .

Gooseberry rhubarb chutney with Indian Venison, both page 172

Fred here. Ann's sister Tracey gave our boys tickets to a dance performance in St. Louis, so we came to the city for the weekend. Like the last time we were there, Tracey encouraged us to stick with our program and make a Cooking Wild recipe while at her house. This time we opted for Indian.
While Ann and Tracey were out running errands, I took care of the marinade for the venison. I've optimistically spent many hours and ingredients making marinades before, and I'm usually disappointed with the results. The complex, magical list of ingredients often ends up not making much difference by the time I take the meat off the grill. And you can get good marinades off the self in the store, even though I might not be able to identify, or pronounce, some of the ingredients they contain.
This marinade was pretty straight forward, and it came together quickly. As soon as I had it together, I got started on the chutney.
My first experience with chutney was when I was dating Ann, and we were having dinner at her parents' house. Ann quietly said to me a "This is really expensive, don't take too much of it," as she passed me the chutney. I used the tiny spoon in the jar to take one tiny spoonful to have with the wonderful Indian dinner that Ann's mother had made. And I loved it.
Since then we've always kept a jar of Major Grey's Mango Chutney in the refrigerator. We've tried other kinds, but have never bested it - until now.
I'd never considered making chutney, but making this batch was a lot of fun. It wasn't too complicated, and it was exciting to see what would happen when you combine ingredients like gooseberries, rhubarb, raisins, cayenne pepper, ginger, garlic, sugar and cardamon.
The result was a bright red chutney (red from the rhubarb) that was fantastic. The recipe says it will keep for months in the refrigerator, and I would be happy to always have a jar on hand.
Tracey made some excellent palak paneer to go with  the meal, and also had some naan and other flat breads to go with it. And she had purchased some bannana blossoms to serve it in. Ann made rice in Tracey's rice cooker, something new to us. The whole meal came together nicely.
I found the venison to be quite good. The effect of the marinade was subtle. If I make it again I might have the venison marinade longer, or make the marinade more intense.
This was another fun and tasty meal, another winner from Cooking Wild in Missouri.